猫が主人公のTV番組やらニュースを最近よくみかけます。それだけ世の中には猫好きが多いということでしょう。私は子供の頃に飼っていたカナリヤ、文鳥、ジュウシマツなどの小鳥を次々と猫にやられた記憶が残っているので猫は好きになれませんが。The Japan Times Online June 8にも猫の記事がありました。
Number one: a tabby named Tournesol
Tournesol is a young, gorgeous tabby that wants to schmooze his way into your world.
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He will purr, knead and give first-rate head bumps to get his point across. He wants to be best of pals. He wants to be by your side, no matter how you like it.
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Tokyo ARK is an NPO founded by Briton Elizabeth Oliver. It is dedicated to rescuing and rehoming abandoned animals.
"tabby" は猫の種類の様ですが、どんな猫でしょう。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A cat whose fur is mottled or streaked with dark stripes.
・Vocabulary.com: A tabby is a house cat with stripes on its fur, often in browns and grays. There are different breeds of tabby cats. Occasionally one will dangle off a branch under a caption that says, “Hang in there.”
Tabby can refer to domesticated cats, but it's also an adjective describing the stripy pattern itself. Tabby cats, with their swirling tabby patches, might also have a marking in the shape of an M on their foreheads. Maine coon cats are one example of a tabby breed. In the 1600's, tabby was a kind of striped silk fabric, and the word comes from the Arabic 'Attabiy, a Baghdad neighborhood where the cloth was traditionally
縞模様あるいは斑模様の飼い猫ならなんでも "tabby" と呼べるようです。